| Legend11 said: I realize some people don't want to give Microsoft credit for anything but this is still innovative. |
You are right, a few people don't want to give it credit for that because it isn't, and we know, becuae we were part of the (let's say) 2 million people that saw this 1 year ago and you are part of the 100 Million that saw first time because MS copied or bought it. Also the Iphone presentation some 6 months ago made very clear Apple was taking the route of multi-touch input technology, making it the first consumer product using it.
DOS: Bought to some poor guy for a misery after they had the contract with IBM to maake them billionaires.
Windows: Xerox PARC>Apple>Digital Research GEM>Amiga OS and then much worse, MS.
Word: Copy of Wordperfect
Excel: Visicalc, Lotus 123
Palm: Windows CE
Windows Mobile: Simbian
IE: Netscape, Mozilla
Messenger: ICQ
MSN (1st try): AOL
MSN (2nd try): Yahoo
MSN Search: Google
Xbox: Well, you can fill this one as you prefer...
And so on and on and on...
I can't recall a single product that it was trully innovative coming from these guys. I admire their great marketing expertise, specially guerrilla and aggressive tactics, but style or innovation, no, these are not their strenghts. And since Ballmer took over it lost even that, now their strengh is milking monopolies till they dry up... billions of profits every quarter? Sure. Market cap above 500 M like in the late 90s? nope, I don't see that ever coming again for this co.
cheers,
